Search This Blog

I'm a writer, get me out of here

A recent piece in the Guardian runs together two dangers for popular writers - celebrity and commercialization of their work through merchandising. Frankly, it's a load of bunk.

Very few writers are in any danger of becoming celebrities (I've never even heard of the Michael Faber mentioned as someone who 'doesn't enjoy the public figure thing'). Of course their fans will have heard of them, but they aren't in any danger of pushing TV and movie celebs out of the limelight. Even J K Rowling manages to keep a relatively low profile compared with the latest reality star's moment of glory.

As for the 'dangers' of commercialization, do me a favour. This is the literary old guard in their death throws. These are the people who could never really see books as a business, prefering to consider it 'art'. Publishing is commercial. Writers and publishers sell books; readers buy them. If you don't want to be commercial, give your writing away. It's easy to do on the internet. I'm doing it right now.

If readers are so enthusiastic they want to buy Harry Potter games or Golden Compass, erm, compasses, then why not? The very fact it was felt necessary to raise this as an issue verges on the pathetic.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps.

Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think).

That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope? I…

The budget airline Easyjet got a lot of publicity recently by announcing that it had formed a partnership with Wright Electric, a firm hoping to make electric airliners. But was this impressive forward thinking and environmental planning on behalf of Easyjet, or a lavish splash of greenwash?

There is a huge problem with making an electric airliner (as opposed to a very lightweight, short range, small electric plane). Kerosene - aviation fuel - is brilliant at packing in energy. Against a conventional lithium ion battery, kerosene stores away around 100 times as much energy per unit weight. So to replace, say, 50 tonnes of fuel would require 5,000 tonnes of batteries.
Don't get me wrong. Battery technology is improving all the time - and that ratio will get significantly better. But the 10 year timescale that Easyjet was talking about seems impossibly short to achieve that kind of improvement in energy density. It may be possible eventually, but we're talking a revolutionary t…

Don't get me wrong - I'm no Trump supporter. But his anti-climate change stance could provide the pressure that's needed to get a meaningful plan put in place to tackle this pressing world problem.

A while ago, a website labelled me a green heretic, by which they meant that I thought it essential we use science, technology and economics to tackle green issues, rather than relying on fluffy bunny, feel-good gestures. I was delighted. We need more green heresy - and I think Trump could be the stimulus to make this happen.

Climate change is real and a huge threat to the future population of the world - I'm sorry, deniers, but the science is solid, it's only the models dealing with how fast it will hurt us that are subject to question. It will be a disaster unless we do something about it. (I ought to say, though, that you needn't worry about saving the planet. The Earth itself will shrug whatever we do off in a few million years. It really doesn't care. This …